Indoor positioning (i.e. position finding, including floor detection) requires novel systems and solutions that are specifically developed and deployed for this purpose. The “traditional” positioning technologies, which are mainly used outdoors, e.g. satellite and cellular positioning technologies, generally cannot deliver such performance indoors that would enable seamless and equal navigation experience in both environments. The required positioning accuracy (e.g. 2-3 m), coverage (e.g. ˜100%) and floor detection are challenging to achieve with satisfactory performance levels with the systems and signals that were not designed and specified for the indoor use cases in the first place. Satellite-based radio navigation signals simply do not penetrate enough through the walls and roofs for adequate signal reception, and the cellular signals usually have too narrow bandwidth for accurate ranging by default.
For an indoor positioning solution to be commercially successful, that is, being globally scalable, having low maintenance and deployment costs, and offering acceptable end-user experience, the solution is advantageously based on an existing infrastructure in the buildings and on existing capabilities in the consumer devices. This leads to the conclusion that the indoor positioning is advantageously based on Wi-Fi- and/or Bluetooth (BT)-technologies that are already supported in every smartphone, tablet, laptop and even in the majority of the feature phones. It is, thus, required to find a solution that uses the Wi-Fi- and BT-radio signals in such a way that makes it possible to achieve e.g. 2-3 m horizontal positioning accuracy, e.g. close to 100% floor detection with the ability to quickly build the global coverage for this approach.
A promising approach for radio-based indoor positioning developed by the applicant of the present patent application models the radio environment (provided e.g. by Wi-Fi or Bluetooth beacons, or by beacons of another suited radio system) based on observed Received Signal Strength (RSS)-measurements as (e.g. two-dimensional or three-dimensional) radiomaps and is hereby able to capture the dynamics of the indoor radio propagation environment in a highly accurate way, that may even lend itself to compression. This makes it possible to achieve unprecedented horizontal positioning accuracy with the radio (e.g. Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) signals only within the coverage of the created radiomaps and also gives highly reliable floor detection.
Huge volumes of indoor radio measurements data can be harvested via crowd-sourcing if the consumer devices are equipped with the necessary functionality to enable the WiFi/Bluetooth data collection as a background process, naturally with the end-user consent. It is also possible to use volunteers to survey the sites (buildings) in exchange of reward or recognition and get the coverage climbing up globally in the places and venues important for the key customers.